Using Wikipedia to Jump-Start Your Research

Using Wikipedia to Jump-Start Your Research

Reading the room is a bit like arriving at a party where you don’t know anybody. You’re standing off to the side watching the action, trying to get a feel for what’s going on. But when you’re exploring a topic for a research paper, you need to do more than spectate: the observer in you must become a participant. The goal, as Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein explain in They Say, I Say, is to “join the conversation.”19 You need to learn enough about a topic to be able to stake your own claims—to make a case for which positions you think are strong and which don’t hold water.

In research, the biggest challenge is knowing where to start. Getting off on the wrong foot—diving headfirst into a densely written book that promotes a single position while ignoring all others—gives you a distorted view of the terrain and eats up precious time. You want to begin with a source that plays fair, that gives you a bird’s-eye view of the different positions, laying out their strengths and weaknesses, while putting undecided issues in the foreground.

Here’s where Wikipedia is super helpful. Its policy of “no original research” provides you with a ready-made bibliography. But taking advantage of this bibliography requires a bit of code breaking, along with some familiarity with Wikipedia’s quirky conventions.

Consider Wikipedia’s two-paragraph “Debate over Bombings” section in the version reproduced here. It’s accompanied by seven references, a soup of last names spiced with the title of a TV broadcast.20

1. 319. ^ Walker 2005, p. 334.
2. 320. ^ Jowett & Andrew 2002, pp. 23–24.
3. 321. ^ Selden & Selden 1990, pp. xxx-xxxi.
4. 322. ^ Walker 1990, pp. 97–114.
5. 323. ^ Stohl 1979, p. 279.
6. 324. ^ “Historians: Soviet offensive, key to Japan’s WWII surrender, was eclipsed by A-bombs.” Fox News Channel, Associated Press. 14 August 2010. Retrieved 18 September 2013.
7. 325. ^ Orr 2008, pp. 521–29.

Wikipedia employs this shorthand when its references come with a full-length bibliography. To find out, for example, what note 319, “Walker 2005, p. 334,” refers to, you have to cross-reference with the bibliography (the corresponding bibliography entries appear below).

Remember, our goal is to get off on the right foot. We’re looking for a source that not only allows us to read the room with greater resolution but puts us in the middle of the conversation and gives us tips for next steps.

1. 1. Walker 2005, p. 334.
2. Walker, J. Samuel (April 2005). “Recent Literature on Truman’s Atomic Bomb Decision: A Search for Middle Ground.” Diplomatic History. 29 (2): 311–34. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7709.2005.00476.x. ISSN 1467-7709. S2CID 154708989.
3. 2. Jowett & Andrew 2002, pp. 23–24.
4. Jowett, Philip S.; Andrew, Stephen (2002). The Japanese Army 1931–45: 2 1942–45. Oxford: Osprey Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84176-354-5. OCLC 59395824.
5. 3. Selden & Selden 1990, pp. xxx-xxxi.
6. Selden, Kyoko Iriye; Selden, Mark (1990). The Atomic Bomb: Voices from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe. ISBN 978-0-87332-773-2. OCLC 20057103.
7. 4. Walker 1990, pp 97–114.
8. Walker, J. Samuel (January 1990). “The Decision to Use the Bomb: A Historiographical Update.” Diplomatic History. 14 (1): 97–114. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7709.1990.tb00078.x. ISSN 1467-7709.
9. 5. Stohl 1979, p. 279.
10. Stohl, Michael (1979). The Politics of Terrorism. New York: M. Dekker. ISBN 978-0-8247-6764-8. OCLC 4495087.
11. 6. “Historians: Soviet Offensive, Key to Japan’s WWII Surrender, Was Eclipsed by A-bombs.” Fox News Channel, Associated Press. 14 August 2010. Retrieved 18 September 2013.
12. 7. Orr 2008, pp. 521–29.
13. Orr, James J. (2008). “Review of Hiroshima in History: The Myths of Revisionism and The End of the Pacific War.” Journal of Japanese Studies. 34 (2): 521–28. doi:10.1353/jjs.0.0036.

Right from the start, the process of elimination allows us to get rid of number 6, “Historians: Soviet Offensive, Key to Japan’s WWII Surrender, Was Eclipsed by A-bombs.” Too narrow. Number 7 is a book review. Reviews can be incredibly helpful when you’ve already determined that a particular book is key to your research. However, since we’re still getting our feet wet, we’ll skip that for now. Numbers 2 (Jowett and Andrew), 3 (Selden and Selden), and 5 (Stohl) are references to full-length books. Judging from their titles, they seem too specific. That leaves just two references, numbers 1 and 4, both by J. Samuel Walker. The subtitle of the 2005 reference, “A Search for Middle Ground,” seems to hit the bullseye—a discussion of different positions rather than a partisan harangue.

We could download it and jump in. We could—and that would be fine. But since we’re already on Wikipedia, there are two more stops, both quick, that boost our confidence we’re on the right track. In the authors’ check, the journal Diplomatic History had been around for nearly fifty years with no red flags. We can also look up J. Samuel Walker’s background and relevant work. His Wikipedia page can help us begin that check: the site considers him “notable.” That status is not itself an assessment of a particular article’s quality.

We can now dig in. The article’s introduction lays out the big question of the debate: “Whether the use of the bomb was necessary to achieve victory in the Pacific.” We learn about the key historians associated with each of the positions we encountered earlier. We also learn about the open questions historians are still debating. The article’s twenty-three pages won’t turn you into an expert, but you’re no longer going to be a wallflower either. You’re armed with a list of questions about the evidence for each position and, using Walker’s footnotes, a roadmap for cutting your own path into this conversation.21